So, I recently learned of the term "greeble." This is what wiki calls it:

A greeble or nurnie is a fine detailing added to the surface of a larger object that makes it appear more complex, and therefore more visually interesting. It usually gives the audience an impression of increased scale. The detail can be made from simple geometric primitives (such as cylinders, cubes, and rectangles), or more complex shapes, such as pieces of machinery (sprockets, cables, tanks). Greebles are often present on models or drawings of fictional spacecraft or architectural constructs in science fictionand is used in the movie industry (special effects).

Greebles allow you to add detail very quickly to models without having to affect the geometry. It is very easy to generate a greeble with Gimp and Blender. All you need is the Insane Bump Plugin for gimp (requires the NormalMap plugin) and knowledge of how to apply a normal map in Blender.

Supposedly greebles were used for the Star Wars space ship

This is my most current Greeble:

I made a 3d model in sketchup and viewed it in Orthograpic mode with shadows on. I then exported an image and used the Insane bump plugin to generate the greebles.

Just a tip for people who may not know about it.

Note: Insane bump also generates Displacement maps if you want to affect the geometry also.

Found tutorials for InsaneBump:

My greebles:

http://forum.maratis3d.com/viewtopic.php?pid=6096#p6096

i think in the gamedev jargon they are know as Detail Textures

At first I thought that greebles were just textures, but I was told that they affect geometry as well. The star wars ship was a basic model. All of the detail (extrusions) were the results of greebles. Greebles are basically just collections of textures indeed, but the term includes displacement maps as well (which affect the geometry). If that is what detail textures are, then I guess they are the same thing.

I am going to try to make an example of how greebles can be used and post it here:

I'd understand greebles to be simply the "random" crap that you add to models to get things interesting. This wouldn't be like "wrinkles" on a face because that is necessary for a model, but for example the sci-fi stuff, but it could be things like pipes, cogs, resistors, that kind of thing, that while are needed for interest, aren't necessary to directly show that a ship is a ship, whereas you "need" wrinkles on a face to show age, hence the difference. I guess it could also apply to organic models, but from what I've seen, the term is mostly used in sci-fi art.

As far as the creation, I think it could be either as modeled geometry(either sitting on to of, or part of, or displaced from the original model), or bump/normal mapped onto it. The method actually used would likely depend on the where the final product is ending up. Also, modelling it could be used to create/bake a normal map for it, but in any case, I think it ALL counts as "greebles".

Ah, that clears it up kburkhart84. I am going to try to make some cool stuff with this technique. I have to get the displacement map thing working right though.

I made a blog post related to this idea a while back (referencing the Super Star Destroyer, too!):

http://www.gamedev.net/blog/492/entry-2254748-technical-design-rant/

Essentially, I thought western designers over-greeble spaceships so that they tend to make monolithic but boring designs.

I made a blog post related to this idea a while back (referencing the Super Star Destroyer, too!):

http://www.gamedev.net/blog/492/entry-2254748-technical-design-rant/

Essentially, I thought western designers over-greeble spaceships so that they tend to make monolithic but boring designs.

Hehe. I am surely going to read this when I get the chance. I might even attempt to model a few of those spaceships there.